Transmission power and duration-aware playout control for packetized media streaming over wireless links

摘要

We investigate joint transmission power control and playout buffer control for packetized media streaming over wireless links. We propose a novel model formulation that tracks the play/freeze duration and play/freeze switch jitter to control the transmission power and playout rate (1 or 0, i.e., play or rebuffer). The model is especially appropriate for audio/music streaming. The optimal joint control is obtained using a Dynamic Programming approach to balance the average power used against achieved quality of service (QoS), reflecting play/freeze duration and jitter frequency. We also investigate two key special cases, where either only power control or rebuffer control is exercised; we obtain certain useful provable structural properties of these individual side controls. Based on those, we also design a low-complexity heuristic control that 'mimics' the obtained structural properties of the optimal ones. Through simulation we see that the developed controls can achieve substantially higher performance over standard benchmark schemes.